


The Iron Bell

by riventhorn



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Atmospheric, Erik and his love affair with metal, Forgiveness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-12 20:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2123220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riventhorn/pseuds/riventhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fleeing from the authorities, Erik seeks sanctuary. Set post-DOFP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Iron Bell

The building of sprawling brick had once been a sugar refinery. The company’s name could still be read in faded paint on one wall. Erik paid it no mind. He did not care about some human enterprise, long since crumbled into bankruptcy. It was the old machinery that had drawn him here, to this derelict ruin on the edge of a lake. The iron had rusted many years ago, but that did not silence it, not for him. It still tugged at his powers, untainted by the plastics that had started infecting everything, the plastics and concrete that had held him a prisoner for so long, denying him even the faintest whisper of a bright copper alloy or an elegant swirl of sterling silver. 

That first step into the kitchen near his cell, before he had registered Charles’s presence—he had been a man emerging from the deepest night to find his senses flooded by the rising sun. The metal had burst around him, awakening his slumbering powers. 

Now that Mystique had abandoned him and all the human authorities were hunting for him, he had come here to seek sanctuary. Here, amid the thousands of iron nails that quivered when his senses brushed across them, the convoluted lead pipes, and the hulking machines whose functions he could not guess or recreate. 

Erik walked over to one of the machines and laid his hand upon it. He did not love iron. He did not even particularly like it, in fact. It had been the iron gates, after all, that had first crumpled under his hands, unlocking years of hellish misery. 

But those iron gates were his beginning, and he had never been able to remain unmoved by the dark, bitter taste of the metal. 

The sun had gone down by the time he let his hand fall away and turned to pick up his bag and seek some sheltered place where he could lay down his blankets.

*

The refinery possessed large glass windows. An entire bank of them faced the eastern horizon, allowing the light to penetrate even the furthest corners and crannies of the room. Each window consisted of many separate panes of glass—twenty-four, to be exact. Each of those panes could be opened, swinging out and upwards, a miniature version of the larger window. 

This attention to detail, this minute replication, fascinated Erik. He spent a long time coaxing the tiny rusted hinges on each pane open, crooking his fingers and stroking the metal with his power. Why so many? Why such magnificent windows in a refinery when they were more suited to a conservatory or a grand library? Had the workers cranked open these small windows, hoping for a breeze in the midst of the machinery’s wheezing hum?

Even Charles’s mansion had not had windows like this. Charles would like them, Erik thought. He would like the whimsy of the little panes and hinges. Every day, Charles would open them in a different pattern—today, eight all in a diagonal row, tomorrow, only the two in the upper left corner. And Erik would watch his reflection, fragmented by the glass, and then with one sweep of his arm, he would close all the little windows, and Charles would appear whole and complete, waiting for Erik to turn around and take his hand.

*

Erik dismantled one of the machines and used the iron to form a crude bedstead so he would have somewhere to sleep. It was hard and unyielding under his few blankets, harder than his bed in the prison cell. It was not pretty or cunning, not like the windows. It was functional, and that was all. He had never created anything beautiful with his power.

With the leftover, crumpled pieces of the machine, he made a brazier, and he lit a fire inside it with odd bits of lumber that had been scattered about. 

When the fire died, he lay down and slept. In the morning, he woke to find that he had twisted the iron around his limbs in his sleep. Iron tendrils curled over his legs and cradled his arms and caressed his chest.

He lay still and watched the sunlight stretch across the rafters, high above. So many years to be without this—the sun and the sky and the metal. He thought of Charles, who had been locked away just as Erik had been, only in a prison of his own making. How the walls of that house must have closed in about him, his head empty except for his own thoughts, chasing each other around and around, gnawing and squeaking like rats trying to escape from a drowning ship.

Three mornings later, Erik awoke to find that instead of twining around his own skin during the night, the iron had crept its way across the floor, stretching out into impossibly thin threads that had finally been brought to a halt by the opposite wall where they remained clinging pitifully to the bricks. That wall faced to the east, towards Westchester. 

Perhaps Charles had been searching for him. Perhaps Cerebro had sent his mind spinning out over the night sky, and Erik had heard it, and responded to its call. 

*

Twice a week, he hiked into a small town nearby to procure food. He told them that he was an artist, seeking inspiration in the wilderness. They took his money and did not look too closely at his face, although with no means of shaving, his growing beard disguised him well enough. Sometimes he boiled water from the lake and washed as best he could with a bar of soap and a flannel cloth. 

It was on the lakeshore that he felt the tug of metal and pulled an object out of the sand. It lay in his palm, and he brushed away the accumulated grit to reveal a silver bead, engraved with a delicate pattern. It had been lost from a necklace or earring, many years ago. 

A human woman had worn this. Mystique was not human, but she would like it, he thought. If she wore it around her neck, it would not change, even as she took on whatever shape she pleased. 

He weighed it in his palm for a long time, and then began to slip it inside his pocket. But then he hesitated and, with a sharp jerk, threw it into the water instead. 

*

Erik had never been without a purpose. Even in prison, he had been consumed with the need to get out, to fight, to protect the others, to remain ever alert and watchful for his chance at escape. Now his days were empty and rudderless. 

They would not be so for long, of that he was sure. The humans would strike again, and he would be called back to the battlefield. But until that time, he could only walk in the woods surrounding the refinery, watching the leaves turn from green to red or yellow and then part from their branches, spiraling down to the ground. He could only open the little windows and rub at their glass with his sleeve until it shone and stuff rags into the panes that had been broken. 

He did not want to go back to prison, and the humans might catch him if he returned to their cities. It was safer here, and he had the metal to sing and whisper to him. Some of the iron groaned, weary and in pain, wanting only to sink into the earth and have its rusted bones turn to dust. But some of it responded gladly to his touch. It did not distinguish between mutant and human, but only recognized that a man like those who had first shaped and given it useful life had returned, ending its long abandonment. 

*

The weather grew very cold, and then the snow came. He huddled around his meager fire, and when the sun at last cleared the clouds, he stumbled outside, blinking painfully in the light, waiting for the warmth to tingle through his skin. 

He could see the tiny impressions of bird feet in the snow, and even the faint brush of a wing. A rabbit had hopped past near the south corner of the refinery, and mice had pattered across the yard, leaving aimless curlicues that disappeared in the tall grass. 

Erik wished he could catch and eat the rabbit, or even the mice. Hunger hollowed his stomach, but he did not have much money left to buy food. He should move on to somewhere warmer, a place where he could steal food if need be. But he did not want to leave. He had found a measure of peace and safety here. In all his adult life, there had only been one other place that had inspired such feelings. 

The Westchester mansion had been full of brass and gold and copper. Soft, shiny metals that servants had to spend hours polishing. Erik preferred the cool simplicity of steel, its iron core burned into a harder, steadier state. He sympathized with it, knowing how it felt to pass through fire, to be consumed by flame only to emerge better and stronger.

And yet he could not deny that copper and gold had a charming brightness, a malleability that made his powers playful, wanting only to bask in that warm, shining light. He had carried a little copper bolt in his pocket that he had found one night on the floor in Charles’s study. He would hold it, occasionally, letting it grow warm in his palm. They had taken it away from him in prison, of course, and he missed it, that small ember that sparked happier recollections amidst all the iron and steel and blood. 

*

He forgave Charles on a mellow afternoon, sitting with his back against the western wall, the bricks chilly and rough against his shirt. 

He forgave Charles for telling him that he was not alone and then leaving him to shoulder the burden of protecting mutants, a weight that he had failed to bear. 

The sliver of anger and resentment and pain eased out of his heart, leaving a quiet ache behind. 

*

Ten iron nails lay on the floor, glinting faintly in the firelight. Erik watched them for a while and then slowly raised his hands. The nails stirred, responding to his call.

His neck and shoulders grew sore from sitting in one position, but he ignored the discomfort, focus narrowed to the iron in his palms. It had been bent and hammered once before, doomed to a life confined into a rigid, straight line and a sharp point, unable to change. _What would you like to be?_ he asked it silently. _What form do you wish to try now?_

It took him a long time to understand its response, but at last he opened his cupped hands to find a small bell sitting there, its rounded top narrowing and then flaring out into a wide base. He rang it, but it did not make a sound. Rising slowly, his knees protesting, he set the bell by one of the little windows and let the weak light of a winter dawn wash over it.

*

He heard the car long before it appeared, bumping over the field and driving carefully around trees. Its headlights pierced the darkness, harsh and artificial to his eyes that had beheld only firelight and sunlight for so long. He did not try to run. He would not be driven from the rusting machines and the little windows he had tended so carefully and the iron bell that had no voice.

The car stopped, and he heard a door open and shut. The faint sound of voices carried on the night air.

He sensed the new piece of metal when it separated from the car, becoming its own entity, resting on the white snow. The spokes of the wheels formed in his mind, and he traced each fragile filament with the lightest of touches. His mouth had almost forgotten how to crook into a smile, but after a moment, it recalled the way.

The firelight gleamed in the windows, all the tiny glass panes alight and quivering. They reflected the door, almost hidden in the shadows on the other side of the room. He stood with his back to it, watching the reflection, and waited for it to open.


End file.
